Tonight was one of those “Everybody fend for themselves for supper” kind of nights. Lots of leftovers (or “must-go^_s” as my mom calls them), so getting everyone together for Cheesy day 4, didn’t happen quite as organically as it does most nights.

… but it did happen, so here we go.

We saw the first honest-to-goodness snowflakes fall from the sky. Of course nothing lasted because there’s been no frost to speak of, meaning that they melted almost as soon as they’d hit the ground.

It didn’t stop Sophie from posting about it on her Instagram along with Michael Bublé’s “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas”… (that might be a real stretch… but when you’ve gone as long as we have without seeing a good snowfall, you take what you can get).

It was also Day 3 of a Cheesy Christmas… Part Deux.

Welcome to Day 2 of this year’s Cheesy Christmas… Part Deux!

Today’s cheese was a discovery for us as I don’t think we’d ever tasted it before.

I’ll tell you about it, but let me also relay a few cheese-tasting tips from the booklet that accompanied our cheeses…

Remember last year when we did that Cheese-based advent calendar?

A different cheese for each of the 24 days before Christmas?

(It was a Christmas gift for Liz because she is a die-hard cheese fiend!)

Well… we’re doing it again this year, so I thought I’d try killing two birds with one stone:

a) try getting my blogging mojo back a bit &
b) bring you along on the cheesy ride.

Today was cheese #1…

Well… our little Cheesy Christmas adventure is coming to a close today.

It’s our last advent cheese of 2020 and we went out with a bang!

Today’s cheese was another from France’s southwest corner… the Basque / Aquitaine region and included not just a special cheese, but also a special ingredient that has it’s own DPO (Designation of Protected Origin)... the Espelette Pepper…

Back on Day 19, we had a Spanish cheese (queso Manchego) and I mentioned, at the time, that it was the first non-French cheese to make it into our Cheesy Christmas menu. I also mentioned that there would be one more in the days to come.

Technically, that’s not true. This cheese was produced in France, but it’s roots are much farther east… in Austria…

Anyone up for some goat cheese from the mountains?
That’s what on the menu for today’s cheese…

What an interesting name for today’s cheese… Abondance (‘abundance’ in English).

Kind of neat that it was scheduled for a Sunday as well…. since, as believers, our abundance comes from the Lord.

Let’s talk cheese…

For today, we ‘left France’ for our cheese of the day.

I’m not sure why this surprised me really. No one said specifically that Cheesy Christmas was a ‘French cheese only’ promotion, but somehow I just supposed that it would be. That being said… it’s one cheese out of nineteen to date, and in the remaining few days, there will only be one other cheese that’s not French.

Vamos…